Why? Because, as one Republican source mentioned to me last week, while Team Obama admitted they got out-raised by $35 million in June, they didn’t report their cash-on-hand total. Hint, hint.

What my GOP source was suggesting was that the Obama campaign’s burn rate is already so high — their staff overhead is enormous, and they’ve been pouring on the attack ads in battleground states — that they’ve substantially depleted the cash advantage they enjoyed in May, when they ended the month with more than $100 million cash on hand (compared to a mere $17 million for Romney, as I’ve previously explained). The Campaign to Re-Elect the SCOAMF had counted on that financial cushion as their ace in the hole. If nothing else worked, they could bury Romney in attack ads down the home stretch in October, but it’s only July and if the Obama campaign is already burning through that cash at an unsustaintable pace . . .

Furthermore, with indications the economy is getting worse instead of better, the Obama campaign’s increasingly desperate attempt to smear Romney as a latter-day robber baron shows that they’ve switched their message from “Hope and Change” to “Fear and Loathing.”

Obama has already “shot his wad,” as Jennifer Rubin puts it, and the incessant rants about Bain Capital and outsourcing don’t seem to have moved the polls significantly in Obama’s direction. Democrats appear to be apporaching that point at which Pete Da Tech Guy likes to invoke the famous words of General Sheridan yelled to his cavalry: “Ride right through them — they’re demoralized as hell!”

As crazy as this kind of “crisis” talk sounds, the fact that Democrats are taking the Carville-Greenberg analysis seriously shows just how desperate Democrats have become in their hunt to find something — anything — to distract from Obama’s policy failures. And you know that the Carville-Greenberg analysis is being taken serious because Obama just spent several days on the campaign trail giving speeches in which he chattered incessantly about the middle-class.

[Republicans are] proposing, on top of continuing all the Bush tax cuts even for the wealthiest Americans, to also then have another $5 trillion in tax cuts, 80 percent of which would go to the wealthiest Americans.

Uh . . . one slight problem there, Chief: Centreville isn’t exactly the kind of Rust Belt blue-collar town where you’ll score a lot of political points trashing “the wealthiest Americans.” Badmouthing rich people won’t get you too far in Fairfax County, which just happens to be the third richest county in America, with a median annual household income of $105,416.

One other problem, Chief: Insofar as the “middle-class families” in Fairfax County have a problem, they blame your policies:

Tami Hurley stood beside Union Mill Road waving a sign in the hot mid-summer sun Saturday afternoon, awaiting President Obama’s arrival at Centreville High School. She was not alone. The Fairfax County businesswoman was one of more than 200 protesters who responded to the announcement of an “emergency rally” sent out by the Northern Virginia Tea Party. On her American flag T-shirt, Hurley displayed a pin that concisely summarized her situation in the Obama era: “Officially Screwed: Small Business Owner.” She explained that her family runs a heating and air-conditioning business that employs 14 people, a business that the Democrat’s administration seems determined to destroy.
“They’re going to increase all of our prices,” Hurley said, explaining that regulations enacted recently by the Environmental Protection Agency mandated a 40 percent decrease in the manufacture of R22, a refrigerant commonly used in air-conditioning systems. “Our price doubled in January, and we have to pass that along to our customers.”
The EPA’s mandate is part of Obama’s environmental agenda, enforcing an international anti-global-warming treaty called the Montreal Protocol. Hurley sees the president pushing a different sort of “climate change,” creating a climate that is hostile to free enterprise. “Obamacare is going to really hurt us, as well,” Hurley said, expressing a widespread concern among small business owners that the president’s health care program will impose costly mandates, decrease the quality of treatment, and require massive new taxes to fund it. Hurley pointed out that one of her young sons has epilepsy. Her son was also among the crowd of protesters who turned out Saturday in Centreville, waving a hand-lettered sign that said, “Obama = No Hope.”
Hostility to small business owners is unmistakably a matter of policy for the Obama administration, and Hurley is not deceived by the president’s rhetorical attempts to portray himself as a champion of the middle class. . . .

A fellow I know who is plugged into national politics inside the Beltway told me it appears that the Obama campaign has an overhead of somewhere between $12-15 million a month. That’s not advertising, bumper stickers, or travel – all salaries and rents and utilities, just the built-in contracted expenses which recur. That’s outrageously huge, he claims, much more than even the rather extravagant Hope & Change campaign of four years ago.

He says they hired more people earlier at higher rates, rented more office space earlier too, also at premium prices for the current market. It is as if they budgeted their campaign based on the $1 billion+ they once bragged they would raise, and expected that no Republican could compete.

Many predicted that since Obama’s record is so abysmal, he would run the most vicious national smear campaign since Jackson and John Quincy Adams, but are surprised by how early he is breaking out the mudslinging, allowing top staff to say the words and echoing them himself. The money may be a factor in this. If he isn’t able to ding Romney soon in a meaningful way, fundraising may dry up even more.

Obama has also enjoyed a presumption all incumbent Presidents are accorded, that of being favored to win reelection. Even many Republicans felt so in the primary season. Most independents and nearly all Democrats did.

Once that perception begins to shift, it is like a tiny leak in a big concrete dam: it’s not going to get better, and may get much worse in a big hurry.

[…] be an economic nightmare.Update: If you’re looking for a silver lining in all of this, read the latest at The Other McCain. The Obama campaign is in full panic mode. Hope and Change doesn’t work so well when the only […]

sybilll July 16th, 2012 @ 1:53 am

Anecdotal, but at a dinner party the other night, politics came up, and the offshore bank accounts of Romney came up, but no mention of Bain. Of the 2 issues that need to be cleared up, Romney’s tax returns seem to be the priority. But, they sure were interested in my offshore fund that earns me 2% compounded daily.
Takeaway: be outraged when a rich guy does it unless I can get in on the action.

ReaganiteRepublican July 16th, 2012 @ 5:01 am

Money? They’ll just print it

Rachel July 16th, 2012 @ 5:40 am

Obama is spending ALOT of his money convincing Obama supporters that Romney is wealthy. Wow…what a revelation. And I’ll bet those Obama supporters have been convinced to vote for Obama! Money well spent, Obama. Keep making those ads to convince your supporters to vote for you, when they were already GOING to vote for you. Hahahahahahahaha. What a moron.

Wombat_socho July 16th, 2012 @ 5:40 am

The U.S. Army would beg to differ.
Also, you misspelled “RAAAAACIST!”.

MunDane68 July 16th, 2012 @ 8:35 am

Ooops! My bad!

And Gen. Forrest isn’t really a US Army hero…not like Sherridan or Abrams, anyway.

Actually, it looks to me like he’s convincing them not to vote for Romney, which they certainly weren’t going to do anyway.

Persuading them to vote for SCOAMFOTUS, on the other hand? They don’t seem to have worked out what reasons to offer, if any.

Pathfinder's wife July 16th, 2012 @ 9:28 am

It would be interesting to see what the campaign’s internals are telling them — I’m thinking it doesn’t look good.
I have a hunch he’s bleeding working class or just can’t get them fired up. Trouble is, the GOP is having a hard time picking them up. Hence the poll numbers out there now.

I’d even go out on a limb and say that voter apathy may be an issue within those groups for this election. What meaning there perhaps is in this is anyone’s conjecture.

[…] Lefty CREEPs Never Run Out of Money Posted on July 16, 2012 7:30 am by Bill Quick ‘They’re Demoralized as Hell!’ : The Other McCain What my GOP source was suggesting was that the Obama campaign’s burn rate is already […]

It’s not so much the GOP having a hard time as just Romney. There’s a bunch of people, I suspect, who may have decided it’s better if Romney does win, but the more he sweats before Election Day the better they’ll like it.

I’m going from the pov that for many voters Romney has become the de facto figurehead of the GOP as its presidential nominee.

Whether sweating or apathy, the case can be made that many people are holding back right now — but this is a problem for the other side as well. It’s early, but the longer this goes on the more I think both parties are going to try and address this — we shall at least be entertained this election season.

Pathfinder's wife July 16th, 2012 @ 1:06 pm

Ah, that’s the conundrum I’ve been seeing — the majority of liberals I know (and adjusted for location: this is a rural, working class location and the local colleges reflect that culture a bit still, so not the same as NYC, LA, or even Chicago) aren’t going to vote for Romney…but they’re not exactly jumping for joy to vote for Obama either (the region is incredibly depressed economically and this has not gotten any better, plus its hardly avant garde in its socio-cultural outlook).

[…] total — an indication, the source suggested, that Team Obama’s spending was out of control. As I said, readers could “expect the Democrat freakout to intensify next Friday when we get the official […]